Samantha Bee on Donald Trump and Evangelical Christians Is Next-Level Late Night

Jon Stewart provided a reminder last week of the gaping hole he left in late night political commentary when he packed up and left town just before the rise of Trumpism. But while Stewart's Daily Show successor, Trevor Noah, has most visibly struggled to fill the void, another one of his Comedy Central protégés is beginning to seize the mantle. No, we're not talking about John Oliver. We mean Samantha Bee.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Most Popular

Monday night brought another brutally effective segment from Bee's show, Full Frontal, a potent cocktail that's equal parts hilarity, outrage, and illuminating historical context. Her argument for why Evangelical Christians are now backing the un-distilled white nativism of Donald Trump was simple, elegant, and devastating. The religious right rose as a political force in opposition to desegregation, Bee explained, and has remained firmly tied to identity politics ever since.

It's easy to back a guy whose demonstrations of faith and devotion to the Bible are so obviously contrived when you don't actually care about any of that. That's also how you back slashing taxes on the rich and deporting 11 million people, in many cases tearing parents away from their children. (You know, the kind of stuff Jesus got behind.) Trump appeals to Evangelicals across the country not as a man of God, but as someone who will restore the old order of things. And that's what they've always been looking for.

This type of segment is something you can no longer find anywhere else on TV. While Noah brings an outsider's perspective to an American political system that, as of this campaign cycle, has officially gone off the rails, he's short on nuance—and incision. (In fairness, Bee does only one show a week, compared to Noah's four.) Bee is far more caustic and pointed than a lot of what you'll find on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight, and now that Stephen Colbert has abandoned his right-wing character, this kind of biting sarcasm is in short supply. This, one would hope, is the future of the fast-mutating Explainer Industry: informative, principled, chock full of context, and of course, damn funny.